Welcome to Dog Tales, a series where author and animal advocate Rob Laidlaw shares stories and facts from his travels and work in dog advocacy.
I recently read an article about dogs checking for bedbugs at a third of Hamilton’s public libraries. That’s one I’d never heard of. I’d known about dogs sniffing out loads of other things, such as bomb making materials, drugs and endangered species products, but this one was new to me. While researching my book No Shelter Here: Makingthe World a Kinder Place for Dogs, I came across some astounding “feats of the nose,” particularly in the medical field, including dogs sniffing out cancer tumors. But I’d never heard about them being used to find bedbugs. Well, apparently they do.
For any Hamilton library-goers who might be reading this, fear not. While the bed bug sniffing dogs did pick up the scent of the little critters, no actual bedbugs or eggs were found.